The term desktop application is typically used to distinguish applications that are resident on a computing device and are designed to execute within a particular operating system from web applications, which are typically applications that are temporarily downloaded via the Internet for execution by a browser application, often using a virtual machine, that is resident on a computing device. While a desktop application is typically natively implemented (i.e. compiled into the machine code of the computing device on which it resides), web applications execute within a browser-controlled runtime environment (e.g. a Java applet) or are written in a browser-supported language (such as HyperText Markup Language (HTML), JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)). As such Web applications are cross-platform (i.e. not native to a specific computing device), relying upon the ubiquity of natively implemented web browser applications to enable the execution of the web application on a variety of computing devices/platforms.
Web applications are typically confined to the web browser application that calls the web application. In many instances, a user cannot receive notifications from a web application unless the user has the web application open in the user's browser application. Therefore, a user can miss significant notifications from the web application by navigating away from the web application. Efforts have been made to reduce the extent to which alerts are bound to a specific web page. Many web browsers provide a framework within which extensions can be created to enable a web application to interact with a user when the user does not have the web application open in the browser. The Extensions beta for the Chrome web browser, developed by Google Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. is one such example. Using the Extensions framework, a web developer can create an Extension to the Chrome web browser that enables a web application to interact with a user irrespective of the user's browsing activity. The Extensions framework is specifically designed to enable the creation of Extensions using web technologies like HTML, JavaScript and CSSs with a few extra Extension Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). While Extensions free a web application from being bound to a specific web page, Extensions typically require a user to have a specific browser open. Therefore, web browser extensions have a tendency to bind a web application to a specific browser application.
A number of dedicated or natively implemented desktop applications have been developed to complement the functionality of web applications. The same technologies that are used to create web applications (such as the HTML, JavaScript, and CSS technologies used to create Chrome Extensions) typically cannot be used to create desktop applications. Therefore, the creation of a desktop application to complement a web application can constitute a completely separate development process. In addition, modifications to a web application can often necessitate significant modifications to the desktop application resulting in the need for a user to perform frequent updates of the desktop application to ensure its ability to continue to function. As such, there are very few desktop applications that have been created to complement web applications.
Adobe Integrated Runtime (also known as Adobe AIR), distributed by Adobe Systems Incorporated, is a cross-platform runtime environment for budding Internet applications using Adobe Rash, Adobe Rex, HTML or Ajax that can be deployed as desktop applications. An application deployed with AIR requires the application be packaged, digitally signed, and installed on the user's local file system. This provides access to local storage and file systems, while browser-deployed applications are more limited in where and how data can be accessed and stored. In order to interact with native processes, Adobe AIR 2 applications can be packaged and delivered via a native installer application. Such applications have the ability to launch and communicate with native processes, using the ActionScript NativeProcess class. The NativeProcess class provides command line integration and general launching capabilities. The NativeProcess class lets an AIR application execute native processes on the host operating system and the AIR application can monitor the standard input and output stream of the process as well as the process's standard error stream. Adobe AIR applications that are delivered by a native installer application are referred to as extended desktop profile applications and the native installer application is specific to a particular operating system.
Many operating systems facilitate the creation of a custom computing environment to increase the efficiency of a user's task completion. For example, a computing environment can include a desktop graphical user interface having desktop icons and/or a task bar, which are configurable by a user to enable the launching of specific desktop applications of importance to the user. By contrast, accessing a web application typically involves a user launching a browser or opening a new tab or browser window, and navigating to the web applications. In many instances, the user must also sign in to the web application.
In general, integration between traditional desktop applications, computing environments and web applications is poor. Web applications are typically confined to the web browser application that calls the web application. While web browsers may do significant work to integrate access to the browser itself, little attention is typically paid to integrating applications that live within the browser with desktop applications or a user's computing environment in general. The end user is often in a situation where task completion is hindered by the lack of robust integration of web applications with the rest of the user's computing environment. For example, features such as the “cutting and pasting” of complex data between web applications and desktop applications are generally absent or incomplete.